Michela Moioli
Michela Moioli interview: “I just thought that I really wanted to come back stronger and win again.”
Olympic Snowboard Cross Champion Michela Moioli on winning gold at Pyeongchang after rupturing her ACL in the big final at Sochi – and her future aspirations in SBX.
Michela Moioli
Michela Moioli interview: “I just thought that I really wanted to come back stronger and win again.”
Olympic Snowboard Cross Champion Michela Moioli on winning gold at Pyeongchang after rupturing her ACL in the big final at Sochi – and her future aspirations in SBX.
“I love winning and this is what motivated me. I never thought to quit.”
By Paul McGee, Feature Writer. March 5 2019
Michela Moioli is a fighter.
I realise that’s hardly a revelation to those of you who know her injury-to-Olympic-gold story.
The thing is, she might have her battle scars, but there’s something beyond Michela’s fighting instinct that makes her the athlete she is today – and shapes the one she is surely on course to become: it is her ambition.
Getting to know Michela, even a little bit, I begin to witness a kind of goal-setting that seems to have no limits. Because the Pyeongchang SBX Champion has her sights set on more than just medals and FIS World Cup Crystal Globes. She wants to carve a place for herself in the very bedrock of Snowboard Cross.
“I wanna be remembered as one of the most successful snowboard athletes in history,” she tells me.
To set her sights on Olympic gold in 2018 after rupturing her ACL in Sochi is one thing. To look beyond that, to set a target of becoming the best of her era, of any era, is positively audacious – like flipping the bird at what might have been a career-ending injury.
Did you know: over the last century and a half, there have been more than 80 world champions in heavyweight boxing. No don’t worry, we’re still talking snowboard cross – I like a boxing reference, that’s all.
Called upon to name more than a handful of those 80 odd pugilists, the layperson might struggle. That’s due in part to the complicated (I’m putting it politely) political nature of boxing’s governing bodies. But it’s also down to the relentless ambition of that handful, the ones who refused to be merely a part of the crowd – however elite that crowd might be. Theirs had to be a place not just in the history of boxing but across the broader realm of sport. For Muhammad Ali, and before him Joe Louis and Jack Johnson, it wasn’t about titles but recognition – elevating the public’s perception of themselves to a point where they became the brightest stars in an already gleaming firmament of sporting talent.
The point is, these few had ambition beyond that which most of us recognise.
But for Michela Moioli, ambition is a tool. A tool she uses to overcome adversity. Present Michela with an obstacle and she simply expands her ambition in order to surmount it. How else do you explain her return to form following that crash at Sochi – a return that delivered Olympic gold no less – and the subsequent aim to be one of the best snowboarders in history?
In any case, the journey towards snowboarding eminence isn’t one that phases her.
“It’s a long way,” she admits, “but it doesn’t scare me.”
Watching the Italian race, her target looks like a realistic one. Even against the big hitters in SBX like Eva Samkova and the perennial, eternal Lindsey Jacobellis (yes she is a former guest here and yes when you read this some of my adjectives will probably have been edited out), Michela Moioli stands out. Already a shining light on the snowboard cross scene, she’s quite possibly next in line to inherit the title of SBX supreme queen, trail blazer in a discipline that’s still embryonic among winter sport. If you want evidence just watch the Olympic event of last year and listen to the commentators who, without my benefit of hindsight, raved about Michela’s near-preordained podium finish from as early as the qualifying heats.
That she is at or near the top of her game is indisputable. The question is, how does she do it?
Alongside her boundless ambition, part of the reason Michela Moioli is so accomplished as a snowboard cross athlete is this: she never stops. Because even as she’s telling me about some upcoming time off, training and conditioning loom.
“Next Week I will be home with my family and my boyfriend. My sister just became a mom so I am Aunt Miky! I will be training a little to be ready for the last world cup of the season and I hope to start cycling too. The weather is warm so it’s perfect!”
The last FIS World Cup race of 2019 is in Veysonnaz, Switzerland, and represents the end of the season for most snowboard cross racers, bar some of the regional events. Michela Moioli currently lies in 3rd overall, behind joint leaders Lyndsey Jacobellis and Eva Samkova. While there aren’t enough points remaining in the FIS World Cup season for a possible win this year, her stats have been impressive over the years since her injury at Sochi: two FIS World Cup Crystal Globes, a 2nd and 3rd overall placing, FIS World Championship silver and three World Championship bronze medals and, yes, Olympic gold.
Was that really a year ago?
Cue white sunshine and a bowl of blue sky hanging over Pyeongchang’s Phoenix Park. It was a perfect day for racing and a perfect day for spectating. A perfect day for Michela Moioli.
The snowboard cross qualifying heats were plain sailing for Michela, and later in the morning she soared down the track, almost 1300m from its start gate at an altitude of 910m to the finish line at 670m, to win her quarter final more than half a second ahead of French racer Julia Pereira de Sousa Mabileau.
The first semi final saw reigning Olympic Champion Eva Samkova and Lindsey Jacobellis finish first and second, but if they looked strong, Michela Moioli looked to have an equally firm foothold in the second semi: lying third for the first few hundred metres, she quickly asserted herself at the front to do battle with Chloe Trespeuch before finding an inside line, and with her incredible straight line speed took the win 0.59 seconds ahead of Trespeuch.
Michela Moioli’s Olympic redemption was within reach.
The Snowboard Cross Big Final by now had a whiff of inevitability about it, such were Michela’s preceding races. But in the words of the BBC commentator, ‘This is as good as snowboard cross gets.’ In other words, no one was here just to make up the numbers. If you Googled a list of famous snowboarders most of the contenders of this SBX Big Final would feature somewhere among the results.
It was shoulder to shoulder stuff with Lindsey Jacobellis for the first half of the course, but Michela’s long, flighty jumps and dominating pace put her in front. By the final few hundred metres she had extended an unassailable lead and took the Olympic title ahead of Julia Pereira de Sousa Mabileau in second and Eva Samkova in third.
It was impressive racing. Impressive because she overcame those famous snowboarders, those elite SBX stars. But it was all the more impressive given Michela Moioli’s previous Olympic outing back in Sochi, and the injury that might have ended her career.
“I broke my ACL in the big final,” she says of that fateful day, “while I was overcoming Alexandra Jekova who was 3rd in that moment – then I crashed.”
SBX is replete with frightening accidents. The potential for crashing is high given the combination of speed, jumps, and racing alongside your competitors. It’s easy to misjudge a roller and find yourself ejected skyward, the course suddenly far beneath your board, with no hope of a successful landing.
Michela Moioli had started the Sochi Olympic snowboard cross final near the back of the pack but she was gaining and had almost drawn past Bulgarian Alexandra Jekova to put herself in third place. Her bronze medal position was short lived: as she edged by, the back of Michela’s board touched Jekova’s and both fell, dropping over the cliff-edge of a jump on the corner’s exit.
Minute’s later Michela was in the red stretcher and on her way down the slope towards urgent medical attention. That she had seriously damaged the ligaments in her left knee was obvious. X-rays then confirmed the worst, a torn ACL.
The prognosis for a complete rupture in the ACL is iffy. Athletes have seen their careers ended through such an injury and if not ended, then at least pushed into the shadows of what it once was – or might have become.
“I just thought that I really wanted to come back stronger and win again,” Michela tells me. “I love winning and this is what motivated me.”
Once again the Michela Moioli ambition saved her SBX career – and perhaps evolved it. Throughout her physiotherapy she kept Pyeongchang 2018 at the forefront of her mind. Maybe it was because she had come so close to Olympic glory before the crash. Perhaps it was just her attitude. Either way Michela was going to get back to full fitness and put right what went wrong at her maiden Games.
“I never thought to quit,” she tells me when I suggest a lot of people might have given up at that point.
But for all her fighting instincts, Michela Moioli is an athlete who likes to have fun. And in that way SBX is nicely tailored to her character.
“I started SBX with my snowboard club when I was 12 and I fell in love instantly. I’ve never tried the other disciplines – even though I really like PGS. I think SBX is the most complete discipline. We have jumps, turns, rollers, doubles. Also we ride together and I really like to fight to be in the lead.”
Fighting and leading: those twin motivators might be responsible for her status as one of the best snowboard cross athletes in the world. Still, I can’t help feeling that it is Michela’s zealous drive to push into ever new boundaries of success that will see her place in SBX history secured. Because as an elite athlete, you’ve got to always want more. I’m sure there’s some expression that says a person’s reach should exceed their grasp: keep stretching yourself to a place that’s beyond your current station.
Or maybe I’m overthinking this.
It’s ironic really. They specialise in competing and I specialise in writing about them. But for some reason when it comes to conclusions, the athlete who actually spends their life on the scene always sums it up in better words than I can.
“Train hard, dream big,” Michela says, helping me out just a little bit.
My thanks to 2018 Olympic Snowboard Cross Champion Michela Moioli for her time and also to Heinz Rigaux at Oxess Snowboards for his assistance in arranging this interview.
You can keep up with Michela as she bids to be one of the greatest snowboarders in history at the following feeds:
Michela Moioli Twitter: @michimoioli
Michela Moioli Instagram: @michela_moioli
Michela Moioli Facebook: /michelamoioliofficial
Related article: Lindsey Jacobellis